Time Waits for Winthrop Read Online Free Page A

everything once. But he got scared, too, and went back to his little old comfy room. It’s too
dec-a-dent
, he says, too
dec-a-dent.
So take him with you and get the hell back, all of you!”
    “But we
can’t
, Mr. Winthrop. Remember they said the transfer has to be complete on both sides? One stays behind, all stay. We can’t go back without you.”
    Winthrop smiled and stroked the throbbing vein on his neck. “You’re damn tooting you can’t go back without me. And I’m staying. This is one time that old Winthrop calls the tune.”
    “Please, Mr. Winthrop, don’t be stubborn. Be nice. Don’t make us force you.”
    “You can’t force me,” he told her with a triumphant leer. “I know my rights. According to the law of twenty-fifth-century America, no human being can be forced to do anything. Fact. You try to gang up on me, all I do is set up a holler that I’m being forced and a flock of government machines show up and turn me loose. Put that in your old calabash and smoke it!”
    “Listen,” she said as she turned to leave. “At six o’clock, we’ll all be in the Time Machine Building. Maybe you’ll change your mind, Mr. Winthrop.”
    “That’s one thing you can be sure of—I won’t change my mind.”
    So Mrs. Brucks went back to her room and told the others that Winthrop was stubborn as ever.
    O liver T. Mead, vice-president in charge of public relations for Sweetbottom Septic Tanks, Inc., of Gary, Indiana, drummed impatiently on the arm of the red leather easy chair that Mrs. Brucks’ room had created especially but uneasily for him.
    “Ridiculous!” he exclaimed.
    “That a derelict, a vagrant, should be able to keep people from going about their business… do you know there’s going to be a nationwide sales conference of Sweetbottom retail outlets in a few days? I absolutely must return tonight as scheduled, no ifs, no ands, no buts. There’s going to be one unholy mess, I can tell you, if the responsible parties in this period don’t see to that.”
    “I bet there will be,” Mary Ann Carthington said from behind round, respectful and well-mascaraed eyes. “A big firm like that can really give them what for, Mr. Mead.”
    Dave Pollock grimaced at her wearily. “A firm five hundred years out of existence? Who’re they going to complain to—the history books?”
    As the portly man stiffened angrily, Mrs. Brucks held up her hands and said, “Let’s talk, let’s think it out, only don’t fight. You think it’s the truth we can’t force him to go back?”
    Mr. Mead leaned back and stared out of a non-existent window. “Could be. Then again, it might not. I’m willing to believe anything of 2458 by now, but this smacks of criminal irresponsibility. That they should invite us to visit their time and then not make every possible effort to see that we return safe and sound—besides, what about their people visiting in
our
time, the five with whom we transferred? If we’re stuck here, they’ll be stuck in 1958. Forever. Any government worthy of the name owes protection to its citizens traveling abroad. Without it, it’s less than worthless: a tax-grubbing, boondoggling, inept bureaucracy!”
    Mary Ann Carthington’s pert little face had been nodding in time to his fist beating on the red leather armchair. “That’s what I say. Only the government seems to be all machines. How can you argue with machines? The only government
man
we’ve seen since we arrived was that Mr. Storku who welcomed us to the United States of 2458. And he didn’t seem very interested in us. At least he didn’t
show
any interest.”
    “The Chief of Protocol for the State Department, you mean?” Dave Pollock asked. “The one who yawned when you told him how distinguished he looked?”
    T he girl made a light slapping gesture at him. “Oh,
you.
”
    “Well, then, here’s what we have to do. One.” Mr. Mead rose and proceeded to open the fingers of his right hand a single finger at a time. “We